Laura Farris: A number of very good points have been made and I will try to respond to all of them. On Scotland, the offence relates to devolved matters, but  Scottish Ministers have decided that the broader offence should not extend to their jurisdiction. They are sticking with section 184 of the Online Safety Act for now. That is why the amendment does not extend the offence to Scotland.
Let me turn to the point that the shadow Minister and the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley and for Bootle all made about the ambit of clause 11(1). If I may recap what I said to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley, I think it is absolutely possible that some forms of domestic abuse will fall under the provisions of clause 11. She gave a good illustration of where that might occur. As I have said already—I hope I satisfied her with my answer—I think there is almost no circumstance where the clause would not be read or even pleaded in tandem with the Domestic Abuse Act. It will be a compound offence, and the charge sheet will have more than a section 11 offence if it occurs in the context of an intimate relationship or a former relationship. Conversion therapy was raised, and I think it is possible that that could fall within the ambit of clause 11 too. It is quite obvious how that could be the case.
Let me make another couple of points. It is quite important to step back from this legislation. It is right that the offence was first conceived with some of the anorexia influencing sites on social media, and some of the other self-harm stuff—I have already mentioned a relevant previous case—in mind. That was the starting point, but it is possible to imagine a far broader range of contexts in which it will end up in court. I think that is fair, and all the observations are right. There is little doubt that it is going to be tempered by the common law as it goes through the court process.
I would like to come back on two points, though. The point was made about a person having a difficult experience of litigation against the Home Office, and we heard the example of the high-profile case related to the effect of an Ofsted inspection; there could be a number of other scenarios. I think we have to look at clause 11(1)(b) when we are thinking about those. We are not considering simply whether the perpetrator is said to have done an act that is capable of encouraging self-harm. By the way, I think that when that is considered by the court, it is not going to include something unpleasant that makes a person feel terrible and leads them to a bad place. That is not the purpose of the clause. In the context of this legislation, “encouraging” has to mean a direct incitement. So the relevant provision is subsection (1)(b), which refers to an act that “is intended” to have such an effect. I may be wrong, but—

Laura Farris: The clause is the latest in a sequence of legislation dealing with intimate image abuse. People may correct me if I am wrong, but I think I am right to say that we have not dealt with intimate image abuse until this Parliament. The first time it hit the statute book properly was the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. I think it is also right to say that, as a Parliament, we have framed it correctly as something that is more often than not just another ugly incarnation of coercive control. It is highly intrusive, humiliating and distressing conduct.
In November 2022, following the passage of the Domestic Abuse Act, the Government announced their intention to create a suite of new offences to deal with intimate image abuse, closely based on the Law Commission’s recommendations in its July 2022 report. Under the Online Safety Act 2023—I hope the Committee will not mind if I spend a moment on the chronology and the legislative journey on intimate image abuse—the Government repealed the offences of disclosing or threatening to disclose private sexual images, replacing them with four new offences of sharing or threatening to share intimate images.
The Bill goes further to tackle the taking of intimate images without consent, and the process of installing equipment for that purpose. First, it repeals two voyeurism offences related to voyeurism of a private act and taking images under a person’s clothing, for which we use the shorthand “upskirting”—although that precedes the life of this Parliament, so I am wrong about that. Anyway, both those offences are reasonably new and have resulted in amendments to the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The Bill will replace them with new criminal offences to tackle the taking or recording of intimate images without consent and the installing of equipment for such purposes.
Those taking offences build on the sharing offences identified in the Online Safety Act to provide a unified package of offences using the same definitions and core elements. That addresses the criticism that there was previously a patchwork of protection, which the police told us led to gaps in provision when it came to this type of behaviour. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who is not a member of the Committee. She has done a lot of work on the issue, and identified this problem in particular. As we know, one of the issues was proving intent.
I am grateful to the Law Commission for its work. It consulted widely with the police, prosecutors and legal practitioners, so we could not only read its report, but hear from a range of experts, including those supporting and campaigning on behalf of victims, and others who are far more knowledgeable than any of us.
The clause will insert a suite of new provisions after section 66 of the 2003 Act. The clause will create three new offences: the taking or recording of an intimate photograph or film without consent; and two new offences about installing equipment to enable a taking offence. I will go through them briefly.
The first provision of the clause is the creation of what we call a base offence of taking any intentional image of a person in an intimate state without their consent. That amounts to what we will call a section 66AA offence. It removes the requirement for a reason or motive. It does not matter if the person was doing it for a joke or for financial payment, or even if their reason was not particularly sinister. The base offence would be met if those elements were established. The offence is triable summarily only and will attract a maximum prison term of six months.
The wording of the two more serious offences mirrors some of the language that we are familiar with; the offences refer not just to “intentionally” taking an image, including of a person in an intimate state without their consent, but to having the intent of causing them “alarm, distress or humiliation”, or taking the image for the purpose of “obtaining sexual gratification” for themselves or another person. The offences are serious and carry a maximum sentence of two years. The three offences are designed to achieve the right balance between the protection of the victim and the avoidance of any over-criminalisation. I will return to that when I speak to new clause 20, tabled by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley.
The base taking offence is subject to a defence of reasonable excuse, such as a police officer taking an image without consent for purposes connected with criminal proceedings. Similarly, a base sharing offence is subject to the defence of reasonable excuse; for example, images taken for the purpose of a child’s medical treatment would meet that threshold, even if the victim was distressed by that. There is another exemption—I do not know who came up with this example, but it is a good one—if the image is taken in a public place and the person shown in the image is in the intimate state voluntarily.  A distinction is therefore drawn between, for example,  a photo of a streaker at a football match, and that of someone who had a reasonable expectation of privacy; that would relate to upskirting, for example.
We are also creating two offences to do with the installation of spycams, which I am afraid we see more and more of in cases going through the courts: an offence of installing, adapting, preparing or maintaining equipment with the intention of taking or recording intimate photograph or film; and an offence of supplying for that purpose. To be clear, it will not be necessary for the image to have been taken; if equipment was installed for that purpose, that is enough to meet the requirements of the offence.
Overall, the clause amends the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to ensure that notification requirements can be applied, where the relevant criteria are met, to those convicted of the new offence of taking for sexual gratification and   installing with the intent to enable the commission of that offence. I commend the clause to the Committee. I will respond to the new clause later.

Laura Farris: I am very sensitive to the issues that have been raised and will respond to them, but I will also explain why we do not accept the new clause.
We have steered very close to the course recommended by the Law Commission in what we have defined in law as an intimate image. It includes anything that shows a person who is nude or partially nude, or who is doing anything sexual or very intimate, such as using the toilet. It is a wider definition of “intimate” than was used in the revenge porn provisions under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. We have expanded it, but we have confined it to what we think anyone in this country would understand as “intimate”.
One of the challenges in adopting a definition of “intimate” that includes, for example, the removal of a hijab is that we are creating a criminal offence of that image being shared. It would not be obvious to anyone in this country who received a picture of a woman they did not know with her hair exposed that they were viewing an intimate image and committing a criminal offence. The Law Commission has made very similar points in relation to showing the legs of a woman who is a Hasidic Jew, or showing her without her wig on. This would be grotesquely humiliating for that victim, but that would not be completely obvious to any member of the public who might receive such an image of them.